Olafur Arnalds

The Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds (Mosfellsbær, 3 November 1986) has managed, through his layered compositions, to blend electronic textures with the style of grand orchestral writing.

Ólafur Arnalds's music explores the meeting point between classical and pop, mixing guitars and piano with a dash of electronics. The Icelandic composer paints an enchanted, magical world: one made of light piano touches over gentle electronic beds and string sounds that are as enveloping as they are glacial. Arnalds's sonic universe is the one that brought Iceland's musical scene to the attention of the whole planet, from the endless suites of Sigur Ros and Mùm, to the exquisitely refined explorations built from strings and faint electronic echoes that recall the school of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson and Peter Broderick, right down to the pure classicism of the piano, which remains the true protagonist of this versatile composer's music.

Ólafur Arnalds's name first caught the attention of lovers of hushed, emotive soundscapes in 2006, with a self-produced album titled "Eulogy for Evolution", in which a couple of fierce electric surges in classic post-rock style found room alongside slow, delicate piano piéces. It was immediately followed by the EP "Variations Of Static" the following year. Between 2009 and 2011, Arnalds released the two projects "Found Songs" and "Living Room Songs".

It was in 2013, however, that he began to reach a wider audience, thanks to the album "For Now I Am Winter". The single "A Sutter" was used in the film "Taken 3" starring Liam Neeson, and together with "For Now I Am Winter" and "Carry Me Anew" it also featured in Nanni Moretti's film "Mia madre". That same year, Ólafur began working on the score for the British TV series "Broadchurch", which won a Bafta award in 2014.

In 2016 came another immersion into the rarefied atmospheres of his icy homeland with "Island Songs" (2016). Alongside his colleague Jóhann Jóhannsson, who became famous for his film scores, Ólafur Arnalds has by now become the best-known Icelandic composer on the neoclassical scene, released by a prestigious label such as Mercury Classics. But as soon as he (deservedly) reached this level of recognition, Arnalds seemed to have set aside somewhat the delicate minimalism of his early work on Erased Tapes, instead trying to shape more expansive works ("For Now I Am Winter") or reviving the Romantic tradition ("The Chopin Project" with Alice Sara Ott). Now he himself acknowledges that his true calling is to tell, through music, the geographical and human reality he comes from: the best way to reconnect with it was to set off traveling and let himself be inspired in the moment, gathering the feelings evoked by different settings into a series of short instrumental pieces, occasionally sung or spoken.

Two years later came “Re:member” (2018), an experimental album for which, together with his friend and sound designer Halldór Eldjárn and Icelandic producer Bngrboy, he used innovative software that transforms the piano into a completely new instrument. The system, generated by the interaction of three pianos (one played by hand, the other two driven by artificial intelligence), is capable of creating wondrous sequences in a mix of airy string harmonies that build towards brilliant electronic finales.

In 2019 Ólafur Arnalds opened the eighth edition of the Piano City Milano festival and performed on the Main Stage of the GAM – Galleria di Arte Moderna with an imaginative performance on three pianos (one grand and two uprights) and a programme of pieces offering a starting point for telling of his naturalistic landscapes, amid forests and evocations tied to the scenery and skies of the North.

His latest album is “Some Kind Of Peace“, from 2020, a sort of journey in search of peace amid the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic, revealing the personal and creative path of the Icelandic composer, once again made up of simple, delicate piano and string motifs that blend with ambient electronics and a hushed voice.